When someone you care about is hurting, it’s natural to want to respond in a way that helps. Maybe you express sympathy for their situation, try to empathize with their pain, or show compassion through your actions.

These terms—especially sympathy and empathy—are often used interchangeably in everyday conversation.¹ In real-life scenarios, however, these responses can feel very different to the person on the receiving end.

While there’s still debate around (and overlap between) their definitions, empathy and sympathy each play their own role in helping us understand how to truly connect with others in difficult moments.

What is sympathy?

Sympathy is when you observe someone who’s struggling and react with concern while keeping some emotional distance. It involves a “self-orientated perspective,” where you imagine what it would be like if you were in a certain situation.² You’re thinking about how you would feel, rather than feeling what the other person is experiencing yourself.

Sympathy is a genuine expression of concern that can allow a person to both respect boundaries and support compassionate action at the same time. It’s a valid way of acknowledging that someone is hurting while keeping the experience more external than in empathy.

Sympathy can be a useful and important emotion. It lets people know you’re thinking of them and concerned about their situation without making you carry the pain of an experience yourself. This can give you the power to help others in painful or challenging situations without becoming overwhelmed by them yourself.

On the other hand, there are situations in which the distance sympathy allows you to keep can create a problem. You may have trouble understanding what a person is going through, making it harder to know what they need and provide useful forms of support.

Sympathy examples

Sympathy often shows up in phrases like:

•  “I’m so sorry”
•  “This must be awful”
• “I can’t imagine what it must be like”

Supportive phrases like these can let others know you see them and are with them in their pain. But they could also feel hollow or misguided to the person who’s suffering. When sympathizing with a person’s experience, remember to focus less on your perspective as the observer and more on the other person’s experience.

What is empathy?

Empathy is different from sympathy in an important way. Experts have described empathy as “feeling with” another person. ³ It involves going beyond perspective-taking and experiencing emotional resonance with what someone’s going through. You’re not just observing their pain from a distance; you’re connecting with it emotionally.

Empathy means acknowledging and attempting to understand someone’s suffering through genuine emotional connection. You feel a part of what they’re experiencing. Literature on the topic suggests that empathy is multifaceted and can involve four dimensions depending on how it presents:⁴

• Affective: Subjectively experiencing another person’s feelings
• Cognitive: Understanding another person’s perspective objectively
• Behavioral: Communicating understanding to the person
• Moral: Being motivated by concern to help

These four dimensions interact and overlap in differing ways depending on context and situation. This means how empathy is experienced can vary widely. Sometimes it’s mainly emotional resonance, other times it includes taking action, and often it’s a combination of several dimensions at once.

Empathy examples

What does empathy look like in real life? Here are some examples:

Job loss: When a friend shares that they lost their job, empathy means you feel their worry and uncertainty. You’re not just thinking about how stressful unemployment would be if you were in their situation. You’re genuinely feeling some of what they’re experiencing.

Grief: Empathy involves truly connecting with someone’s emotional experience. You might tear up when they describe their grief, or feel your stomach drop when they share hard news. These aren’t performative responses—they’re genuine emotional reactions to another person’s pain.

Healthcare: Patients in healthcare settings described empathetic care as creating a personal connection where they felt “heard, understood, and validated” rather than pitied.⁵ This feeling of being truly seen and understood reportedly had positive effects on their care experiences.

Key differences between sympathy and empathy

The main difference comes down to perspective and emotional closeness:

Sympathy involves feeling “for” another person from your own viewpoint. You maintain at least some emotional distance while observing their situation.

Empathy involves feeling “with” another person and putting yourself in their shoes. You experience emotional resonance with their emotional state.

Another key difference: Empathy requires understanding and acknowledging another person’s feelings with an attuned response.⁶ Sympathy, while logical and helpful, doesn’t always require deep understanding of what a person is experiencing.

Where compassion fits in

Sympathy and empathy represent two different ways of responding to someone’s suffering—one led by thoughts and one led by emotional connection. But there’s a third response that goes even further: compassion.

Compassion takes empathy one step further by adding action. While empathy can end at emotional understanding, compassion is action-oriented.⁷ It involves a drive to end the suffering of others and is often expressed through acts of kindness or service.

With compassion, the person responding uses themselves as an instrument to help relieve suffering. They move beyond feeling with you and actively seek to help.

Compassion examples

Palliative care patients described compassion through specific examples of healthcare providers going above and beyond their job duties:⁸

• Putting an arm around a shoulder during a difficult moment
• Holding a hand when words weren’t enough
• Running over and helping when needed, rather than just expressing concern

These small but meaningful acts showed genuine care and a desire to actively help, not just acknowledge suffering. Compassion combines the emotional resonance of empathy with concrete action aimed at relieving suffering. It’s empathy put into practice.

Whether you’re dealing with difficult emotions, navigating challenging relationships, or simply need someone in your corner, a therapist can help. Visit our directory to connect with a therapist today.